


An Act of Kindness

by Blackforestfire



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Christmas, Neighbors, Rated for language and terrible cooking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackforestfire/pseuds/Blackforestfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Christmas AU where John and Dave are neighbors, Dave is a jerk, and both of them are alone on Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Act of Kindness

The loud, rhythmic thumping is in perfect synch with your headache. You press your fingers on either side of your eyes and rub your temples, groaning. This is the second time today your neighbor decided to play his god awful music and you are wondering if you could call the land lady on his ass again.

Gritting your teeth you get up from your chair and walk over to the wall, giving it a good hard thump with your fist to see if he’d get the message.

The music doesn’t falter, and you go find an aspirin on the other side of your tiny apartment.

It’s a couple days before Christmas and you glance guiltily at the tiny tree you had perched on top of your piano. You found it at goodwill for two dollars and bought the sad foot-tall fake tree out of sympathy. It sits on your most prized possession, the piano, which takes up almost all your living space. A couch claims the rest of the room, though you managed to mount a television on the wall.

You move into your modest kitchen for a glass of water, pills in your hand, and glare at the far wall. You and your neighbor have been at odds since day one. He had moved in not long after you had and, thinking you might make a friend, you’d gone over with a pie to say hello. What you got instead was a cold shoulder, suspicious frown, and the pie delivered back to you the next day. Then the music started.

As you fill your glass up and take your pain pills, you think that if it had been any other type of music you wouldn’t have been so quick to blow. Your neighbors upstairs after all just had kids and you can handle your fair share of noise. But your next door neighbor’s pounding bass just hit your buttons in a way that made you bristle all over.

You decide if it didn’t stop by midnight you’d go over again and tell him to turn it down.

As if he listens.

Tonight you wait until 11:59 because deep down this is the most fun you know you’ll have all week. You try not to look at your little Christmas tree or the blinking light on your answering machine, opting to watch the clock tick down to where you can let all you frustrations out in one colossal swoop.

You are out of the room the minute your clock reads midnight and pounding on his door. You feel something curl and tighten in your belly, a nervous rush of adrenaline as the door opens like clockwork and there he is.

He’s handsome, you suppose, if he ever smiled. He has a round face and a small nose, atop which are perched a pair of sunglasses he never seems to take off. He’s dark skinned, but his hair is bleached almost white and the contrast is striking. He’s got his hand on the doorway, as usual, the other one hidden behind it as he grins at you with his full lips.

“Egbert,” he drawls out in that infuriating Texan accent he knows makes your skin itch.

“Strider,” you reply with frigid politeness. The smile on your face stretches until it hurts.

“To what do I owe the pleasure? You missin’ me already, bro? Could have sworn you were knocking on my door just the other day. Be cool, Egbert, you’re lookin’ desperate.”

Your eyebrow twitches. “I am here for the exact same reason I always am, Strider. It’s midnight. You know the rules around here by now. Please turn your music down.”

Strider’s grin grows even larger as he shifts his weight to lean against the door frame. “Come on now, Egbert, we all got to make a living somehow. Ain’t my fault you can’t recognize genius at work.”

“Maybe because there’s nothing to recognize,” you say brightly, enjoying the way his grin falters for the briefest of seconds. You may not know Strider on a personal level, but you’ve had these little chats so often you can tell when his cool-guy charade cracks.

“Try and keep it down,” you finish, feeling immensely pleased with yourself. You leave him there and go back to your apartment, knowing he won’t close his door until you leave first.

You crawl into bed feeling deeply pleased with yourself, though you know it’s petty and childish. The music continues to thump on, but you pretend you can hear the smallest decrease of volume.

\---

_Merry Christmas Eve, son! It’s Pop. I know you must be hard at work in the office, but I want to let you know how proud I am of you. You work so hard, I hope you can enjoy Christmas day off. I hope to see you in the New Year! Love you._

You stare at your shoes as you delete the message and move into the kitchen to finish the remains of your Christmas Eve cooking. You were making honey glazed ham, mashed potatoes, and some peas when the machine went off and now you regret listening to it.

You shuffle around as you get the potatoes ready, glancing at the oven that contains your ham. It’s going to be weird, having Christmas alone. Pop and you almost always had it together. You’d make the traditional Christmas Eve dinner together, switching off roles like a team. In the morning you’d wake up early, even when you came home from college for winter break, to see what was under the tree.

You’re too old for that now, and morosely you begin to mash the potatoes.

Once the ham is done everything else comes together quickly. You set the counter that acts like a table and bring the little tree over to keep you company. You just slid onto your bar stool when you hear the smoke alarm go off in Strider’s apartment.

You look over at the wall you share with him in mild puzzlement.

You have no idea what could be causing that, since you’ve never actually seen him eat anything but take-out and pizza. You listen as the alarm continues its muffled beeping and a little gnawing worry begins to grow in your stomach.

What if it’s an actual fire?

You honestly don’t think Strider knows how to care for himself properly after all.

He could be unconscious.

You smile briefly as you imagine no more obnoxious music.

The fire alarm continues and you give your dinner a longing look before sighing and hopping down off the bar stool.

He better be lying on the ground surrounded by flames.

You walk over and knock on his door, waiting for the typical shit eating grin to appear. When it doesn’t, you frown and knock louder.

Seconds tick by until your paranoia gets the better of you and you’re pounding on his door before it finally wrenches open, causing you to stumble forward in surprise.

“Holy shit, Egbert, chill! What the hell did the door do to deserve that beating?”

“You’re not dead,” you blurt out, more surprised than anything else. The fire alarm is still going and it’s a lot louder now that his door is open.

Strider opens the door fully and gestures to himself. “Do I look dead?”

You open your mouth to give him some snippy reply when you catch full sight of him. He’s wearing an apron, for starters, which is frayed and covered in stains that look older than you are. His sleeve is burned and there’s a slight sheen of sweat on his face. His white blond hair, usually immaculate, is pushed up impatiently by his sunglasses. You notice, absently, that his eyes are a brilliant shade of red.

“Okay, Egbert, stop gawking now can you please leave? Believe it or not there’s some magic happening in here and I can’t let you dorkiness ruin it.”

“I am not a dork! And would you please shut off that alarm?”

Strider folds his arms and gives you a look. “Sure thing, buddy. Do I look like a fireman to you? Let me just wave my hands at it and maybe it’ll stop!”

“Oh for the love of all things holy, if you don’t know how to do it then let me!”

You push your way past him without a second thought. His apartment floorplan is the same as yours, so you head to the kitchen where the fire alarm should be. Sure enough, it’s screeching away over the stove top which is littered with casualty.

You turn off all the burners and move the disaster away to the counter. Quickly, because you feel a migraine coming, you grab a dish towel and begin fanning the air around the alarm.

“Oh, nice, like that’ll work,” Strider mutters behind you, sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.

You ignore him and focus on your efforts, and sure enough the alarm shuts off after a minute or two.

“There,” you say, putting the towel down and folding your arms across your chest.

Strider looks stunned. “Holy shit that actually worked. Way to go, Egbert.”

“Thank you. Now what the hell were you doing to set it off like that? You never cook.” You walk over to the counter that holds the remains of whatever Strider was trying to make. There are stained papers beside the smoking pan with a recipe for holiday sauce. But whatever toxic sludge that’s stuck to the bottom of the pan is certainly no sauce.

The other dishes were in the same boat. Everything was either burned or unrecognizable.

“Well,” Strider finally says, body stiff as he watches you survey his handy work. “Go on. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Oh shit I don’t know, but I bet the subject matter is what’s in front of you right now. So get it over with, I have to clean this shit up and start again.”

“Dude,” you hold your hands up in alarm. “I’m not going to make fun of your cooking. Holiday sauce is super hard to make, even I mess it up.”

“Oh wow that makes me feel all warm inside.”

You glare at him and drop your hands to your sides. “What’s wrong with you? I’m trying to be nice!”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong is right in front of you, Egbert. What’s wrong is I don’t know how to cook jack shit beyond toast and, on a good day, minute rice. What’s wrong is my older brother might be coming to spend Christmas with me and I don’t have a damn thing to serve. I couldn’t even find a fucking tree at this hour so I made one out of empty beer cans! What’s wrong is I know nothing about this shit yet you’re standing here in my kitchen acting like this is something totally chill and normal. So take your ‘nice’ and shove it because I’ve got to figure out what to do.”

You stare at him for a solid minute before you can gather yourself to respond. Maybe it was the slightly desperate look in his eyes or the fact that you think you saw a shiny new burn on his palm, but you were suddenly stuck with an idea.

A very stupid idea.

“You’re going to need to start completely over,” you hear yourself say as you move about the kitchen, putting the pots and pans in the sink and running hot water. “Go to the store and pick up a couple chickens, some sweet potatoes, and asparagus. Holiday sauce won’t happen tonight, but I can make a lemon butter sauce for the asparagus if we sauté them.”

“We? What?” Strider hadn’t moved an inch as you bustle about, finding an untouched bottle of soap at the back of a cabinet under the sink.

“I’m going to help you make a dinner for your brother, okay? Now go to the store and get that stuff. I’ll clean up here and should be ready to go by the time you get back.”

“But—”

You turn with your hand on your hip and soapy sponge pointed menacingly at his chest. “Do you want an edible meal on this table before midnight?”

“Yes,” Strider says quietly.

“Then go to the store and get me two chickens, six sweet potatoes, and some asparagus!”

Strider grabs his coat and runs out before you can remind him he was still wearing his apron. You turn to the sink and grab the holiday sauce pan, attacking it with a vigor that would have made your dad nod in approval.

The sink water turns various shades of brown as you take out your guilt on the innocent cookware. By the time Strider comes back loaded down with groceries you have dried off the last sparkling clean pot.

“Holy shit, are those mine? I don’t think they looked like that since I bought them,” Strider says while setting down the bags. He pulls off his coat and leaves it on the floor, moving into the kitchen.

“Can you get the chickens thawing? Fill the sink with warm water and place them in it. I’ll start on a crumble and the sweet potatoes.”

“Uh, sure thing.”

You fill the newly cleaned pot with water and chop up the sweet potatoes quickly, leaving the sink on for sake of time. While the water boils you begin on the crumble for the sweet potato dish you are going to make. As you work Strider puts the chickens in the hot water like you asked, though he keeps looking at you as though he expects you to vanish any second.

“Hey, uh, what can I help with?”

You look up to see him standing there looking remarkably uncomfortable in his own kitchen.

“Can you heat up the oven? We’re going to bake the sweet potatoes and the chickens. Look on the packaging for the baking heat recommendations.”

“Yeah.”

You dump the potatoes in the now boiling water and go back to kneading the crumble, getting it ready while Strider bustles around behind you with the oven settings. You would offer to help but you don’t think he’d take too kindly to you completely kicking him out of his kitchen.

Once the chickens are ready and the potatoes have been mashed, you briefly run back over to your place for a casserole dish because Strider has none. You put everything in the oven and begin sautéing the asparagus in a thick silence.

Strider stands next to you, watching as you poke at the stalks before adding some salt and pepper.

“So…why are you doing this?”

You shrug, turning the heat down. “It’s Christmas Eve. Why not?”

“Maybe because you sort of hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Uh huh.”

You throw him a look that earns a small grin in return. You roll your eyes and go back to cooking, a little relieved that Strider had at least stopped looking so panicky.

“I don’t,” you defend. “You just don’t think about the people around you and how your actions affect them. That’s all.”

“Ouch, okay mom,” Strider says, then fidgets around with his apron.

The silence stretches out as the asparagus pop and sizzle pleasantly, filling the room with a pleasant aroma. The chicken and sweet potatoes have another twenty minutes on them so you turn off the burner and put a lid over the stalks to keep them warm.

“It’s my work,” Strider suddenly says, and when you look at him in confusion he elaborates a bit. “Music. It’s my music. I make it. I work during the day at a grocery store so the night is the only time I have to work on my stuff. I get gigs sometimes, or sell my stuff. On weekend nights I have a job at a bar downtown as their DJ.”

“Two jobs? That’s pretty rough, Strider,” you say as you move over to the sink to begin to clean up.

“I guess. Anyway my point is it ain’t personal. It’s not like I moved in and thought ‘well shit let’s make the neighbors hate me, sounds fun’.”

You stay silent as you scrub a spatula clean, the guilt beginning to come back to chew on your mind.

He brings you over the bowl you used to make the crumble and offers to dry the dishes, which you agree to. You both work in an efficient silence for a time before you finally figure out something to ask him.

“So, uh, which bar do you work in?”

Strider looks up from drying, eyebrows quirked, before a slight smile plays over his lips. “Midnight Crew. It’s a pretty seedy joint though, I wouldn’t recommend it to somebody like you. Pretty sure I almost got shanked the first night I got there, but the dude brushed it off as a pat on the back when I told him I was his new DJ. Weird guy. He’s my boss I think?”

You laugh and hand him the bowl. “At least that’s interesting. I do research. So like, all day hunched over something. I’ll be a hunchback by the time I’m thirty. Spine replacement by forty.”

“Oh come on, Egbert, give yourself some slack. Spine replacement first, then hunchback.”

You snort and roll your eyes. “Yeah probably. Also, my name is John.”

He’s quiet for a minute and then nods like that makes perfect sense to him. “Cool. I’m Dave, your asshole neighbor who you made dinner for.”

“For your brother, but yes you are an ass,” you quip and then laugh when he smacks you with the damp towel.

The oven beeps and you go over to get the rest of the food when Dave grabs your arm. You look over in confusion only to see him offering you the worn-out apron.

“You know,” he says, not meeting your eyes, “in case the chickens reanimate and decide they’re tired of being the food and want a role reversal. Can’t let them get the jump on you, bro.”

You put it on and fake relief when you open the oven and no reanimated chickens attack either of you. The chickens smell amazing and the sweet potatoes are a glistening orange. You add the crumble on top of them and then get the asparagus.

Dave sets the table for two and you place everything in what you think is a satisfactory manner. It looks amazing and the smell is making you think back to your own abandon dinner, no doubt cold by now.

You both are quiet for a minute, looking at the food, before you clear your throat and hand him back the apron.

“Your brother will be here soon, so I’ll clear out. Good luck with your music,” you offer him a handshake with makes him snort.

“Dude, come on now.” He offers you his fist instead and you give him a gentle bump along with what feels like your hundredth eye roll tonight.

“I’m sure I’ll see you again some night for our custom bitching, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” you smile and add quickly, “and maybe I can actually listen to source of my bitching some time?”

Dave looks taken aback before his face splits into a big smile. “Hell yeah you can.”

You exchange ‘merry Christmas’s’ and leave, feeling lighter on your feet.

When you get back to your place it’s six and your food is cold. Rather than heat it up you go pick up the phone, dialing a familiar number.

“Hi, Pop, it’s me, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas Eve. Oh, me? No work is fine. Mhm. Yeah. Alone? No I’m not spending Christmas alone, Pop.”

Your eyes flicker to the shared wall and you wonder if Dave’s brother is there yet and if he likes the meal they made together.

“Hmm? No sorry just thinking. Yeah. Yeah you too. Love you, Pop.”

You hang up and go to reheat your dinner. When you’re done you put the little tree back on your piano and this time you can’t stop smiling at it.

You stay up late watching Christmas movies and when it hits midnight you can’t stop grinning. There are a few packages under your tiny tree that friends and Pop sent you, but you’ll wait until the morning to open them.

Instead you get to work on the dishes, not yet willing to go to bed. You scrub away and make more bubbles than necessary before draining the sink and drying everything off.

Once it’s all put away you stand in your kitchen and try and think of something to do. You’re not sure why, but going to bed just doesn’t feel right. So you heat up some milk and grab a packet of hot chocolate and make yourself a big mug.

You had just settled into your couch when a quiet knock comes on your door.

You twist around in surprise, almost certain you imagined it. But when it comes again, almost quieter you think, you get up with your mug and open the door.

Dave’s standing there, though dressed differently than before. He has on a pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt and is balancing a large looking container of something on his hand.

“Oh, hey, I didn’t know if you’d be up or not.”

You don’t think Dave has ever knocked on your door before. Usually it was you running over to complain about something or other.

“Dave, hi, do you want to come in?”

He nods and you let him in, shutting the door behind you. He kicks off his shoes and sets the container down carefully on your kitchen counter.

“I brought you some of the leftovers, figured it was your baby too and you deserved visitation rights and all that. But that bun came out of my oven buddy so I expect child support and all that.”

“Okay but I get Christmas and New Years, it’s only fair since you stole my innocence.”

Dave laughs quietly and then stuffs his hands into his pockets, looking unsure now that he’s in.

“So how was it? Did your brother like it?”

“He never showed up.” Dave shrugs and looks over at your piano. “Oh hey, do you play?”

You open your mouth but your voice catches. You clear your throat and nod, deciding not to press. You don’t know him that well after all, maybe something happened. “Yeah I do, my dad made me play when I was a kid and I was that one weirdo that actually liked it.”

“That’s cool man, piano is a boss instrument. I prefer electric keyboard myself but still, nice going there, Egbert.”

“It’s John,” you remind him on your way to the kitchen. “Want some hot chocolate?”

“Yeah…John. Thanks.”

You flash him a smile and set about making him a big mug of it, even going into the pantry to find some marshmallows.

The two of you head over to your couch and sink into it, cradling your respective mugs of hot chocolate. Dave finds a Christmas movie and the two of you settle in, talking occasionally and only moving to grab some leftovers for snacking.

He stays until the sky begins to brighten and you find yourself following him back to his place, tired but content.

“I’ll see you around, John?”

“Yeah, definitely. Merry Christmas, Dave!”

He gives you a sleepy grin that makes your smile grow. “Merry Christmas, you giant dork.”

When you finally get to bed you think about New Years and wonder if he’s got any plans for that. Maybe you two can make another meal together and watch bad movies. You think you’ll ask him tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a fun little thing I wrote for you guys for the holidays! I'm thinking about a sequel for New Years depending on if ya'll like this and want more?  
> Anywho there you go!  
> Merry Christmas!!


End file.
